[lbo-talk] The Afghan War as a "Loss Leader"

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 30 09:24:36 PDT 2005


Chris Doss:

...the Taliban were aggressively promoting war everywhere from the North Caucasus to Northern Iran to Western China. When the US (and it was actually a US-Russia operation BTW) eliminated the Talibs from power, they headed off a military conflagration that was threatening the entire area. This BTW is why Afghanistan's neighbors supported and continue to support the US morally and materially...

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Accepted.

However, I suspect that the further away in time we travel from the 'Taliban moment' -- the period of their rule and, therefore, maximum threat posture to the region -- and the longer Afghanistan remains a playground for warlords, Pakistani intelligence, shoot/detain-first-ask-zero-questions US forces/intel operatives, still lethal Talib remnants, drug traffickers, Western mercenaries, yet-to-really-start rebuilding 'rebuilding' contractors, what-the-hell-are-they-doing NGOs and a host of other elements I'm not aware of, the less kindly disposed the people of the region may be towards this presence.

Indeed, there may be rumblings of this afoot now (and I'm not referring to the Jihadi sympathizer camp) but we may be too focused on either 'Americocentrism' as you put it (which, in the current context means opposition to invasion) or celebrations of Talib-neutralization to notice.

In short, it all looks good (strictly from a 'hurray the Taliban are gone' POV) in 2005 but we shouldn't be confident this will persist into the future.

The overthrow of the Taliban, in hindsight from, say 2015, may be viewed as only a pause in the development of a movement which, so long as the growth conditions remain (and they surely seem to in post-Talib Afghanistan) will show itself again and again.

So, to the extent that the post-invasion period fails to address the conditions that lead to Taliban (or some variant) resurgence, the entire enterprise can be called a failure.

.d.

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